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[QAlchemist]

[TRAILHEAD?] Howard Fair?

[licoricesniper]

I had an email early this morning as well. I often have downtime on the grave shift so I had the opportunity to decode it and even had a little time to chat with Howard Fair. I won't have internet access to post my resullts until this afternoon/evening but I will as soon as I can. My apologies...

[Zobot257]

Interesting. I'm keeping an eye on this. I've had a heck of a time finding an Arg to get involved in lately that I haven't worried has died on me (I keep getting that fear with the Abandoned Windmill, although the game keeps surprising me, which is good)

If it looks like it's going anywhere I'll join in.

[QAlchemist]

How'd you get in touch with him, licorice? Just emailed?

Waiting eagerly for your results.

[licoricesniper]

FINALLY...

[QAlchemist]

Please do!

And as I posted above, the translated text is part of a story that includes a character named 'Howard Fair' who is learning green magic despite the warnings of his great-uncle.

[draghkar]

I send an email:

[JehosephatDostoevsky]

Hi, been reading this thread, always looking to jump into new things. Jack Vance wrote the short story with Howard Fair in it

[QAlchemist]

There's a link to the story up in my first post.

Quite intriguing, really!

[QAlchemist]

I recieved the following message in email:

[Zobot257]

So in on this. I'll see if I can't get a really intelligent puzzley friend to look at it.[/i]

EDIT: I only noticed one thing so far: At the top left, starting with the "s" go down four to spell "Seat". The "T" at the end of it goes right to spell "The" and then proceedes forward to spell "Egg". Each word ending with the first letter of the next word. But the chain ends there...

EDIT TWO: ELECTRIC BOOGALOO:

Ok, my friend's insight might have a potential way of finding a solution for us: The roman numbers on the right side make up:

1 1 2 3 3 4 5 5 6 9

which rearranged makes:

3 1 4 1 5 9 2 6 5 3

or:

3.141592653

Which is just Pi's first digits all scrambled up.

I have NO clue the significance of that, but seriously. This friend of mine is a genius.

[Bishop916]

Looks interesting, I'll read the bit by Mr. Vance tomorrow, I am still reeling from the last thread.

[Minz]

Looks like the image might be some sort of cipher ring/cylinder. Pi might be the key, indicating by what number you have to rotate each line.

The last line looks suspiciously like a web address though. so it might also be another kind of cipher like each line rot-x'ed by the corresponding number in Pi.

I'll try some of those theories later.

[draghkar]

I got the same mail... with the same parchment.doc..

some interesting things.. (probably the name of the PM)

[JehosephatDostoevsky]

Hi

Just a couple of observations on the block of letters:

I think the 'pi' clue is a red herring. The text underneath the block of letters states 'thoughts can and will circle themselves too much resulting in insanity. Please be rational" etc. Pi is an irrational number, so I think we're being warned to stay away from pi. Likewise, I think the warning against circles could be suggesting that it's not ROT or a cylinder cipher.

But two thoughts which might be useful:

The nearest rational number to pi is 3 (I assume, don't really know maths), so maybe that is relevant somehow.

But I think an idea which might have more legs: if you add up the roman numerals, you get 39. There are 39 letters in each row. There must be something there. I'm gonna hazard a guess that if we take letters from each row based on the roman numerals (i.e. the first letter, then one letter after that, then two after, then three after, then three after etc) we might get something. And that's what I'm gonna do now, will let you know if anything at all comes out of it, but just thought I'd try and contribute with some comments.

Also, I hope the British Library thing is relevant, would love an ARG that requires going places that's based in London